- Title Information
- Title
- Anger, Emotion, and Desire in the Gospel of Matthew
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Roberts, Erin
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- creator
- Origin Information
- Copyright Date
- 2010
- Physical Description
- Extent
- ix, 178 p.
- digitalOrigin
- born digital
- Note
- Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2010)
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Stowers, Stanley
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Director
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Konstan, David
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Reader
- Name:
Personal
- Name Part
- Kraemer, Ross
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- Reader
- Name:
Corporate
- Name Part
- Brown University. Religious Studies
- Role
- Role Term:
Text
- sponsor
- Genre (aat)
- theses
- Abstract
- Matthew 5-7 has played a central role in the history of Christianity and is known as the cornerstone of the moral teachings of Jesus. Although much of the material in Matthew 5-7 is paralleled in Luke 6:17-49, there are significant differences to be explained. Of note is the anti-anger teaching in Matthew 5.22, which commentators trace back to Jesus himself or claim as unique to the early Christian movement.This dissertation shows that anti-anger teachings were not unique to the early Christian movement. Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers used certain conventions when discussing anger and articulated distinctive positions on its moral value. The dissertation argues that Matthew's portrayal of Jesus as the bearer of an anti-anger teaching (5.22) and the parables about anger in the kingdom of heaven (18.21-35, 22.1-14) are consistent with Greek and Roman philosophical conventions. Further, given the variety of positions taken by philosophical schools regarding the moral value of anger, it argues that Matthew's teaching aligns most closely with Stoic ethics.The dissertation uses the anti-anger teaching to illustrate the need for a re-conceptualization of the study of early Christian ethics. It critiques of the way scholars of the New Testament (NT) have used the topic of emotion as a category of analysis and argues that a judicious treatment of emotion in the NT must recognize cultural and historical differences in emotion theory. In particular, through a comparison of Greek and Roman moral psychology with the teachings about emotion in Matthew, it situates the study of NT ethics within the broader field of ancient "virtue ethics." This shift in context is not a rejection of the Judean context of the earliest Jesus movement. Instead, it is a critique of the pervasive assumption that the proper context for Matthew is a decidedly non-Greek kind of Judaism. By demonstrating the benefits of using philosophical texts as comparative exempla, the dissertation provides an intellectual context that contributes to a more complete picture of the ethical and literary aims of Matthew.
- Subject
- Topic
- Gospel of Matthew
- Subject
- Topic
- Hellenistic moral philosophy
- Subject
- Topic
- Stoicism
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/908819")
- Topic
- Emotions
- Subject (FAST)
(authorityURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast", valueURI="http://id.worldcat.org/fast/808763")
- Topic
- Anger
- Record Information
- Record Content Source (marcorg)
- RPB
- Record Creation Date
(encoding="iso8601")
- 20111003
- Language
- Language Term:
Code (ISO639-2B)
- eng
- Language Term:
Text
- English
- Identifier:
DOI
- 10.7301/Z0X63K6C
- Access Condition:
rights statement
(href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/")
- In Copyright
- Access Condition:
restriction on access
- Collection is open for research.
- Type of Resource (primo)
- dissertations